(Again, I’m posting this in March 2024 as I seek to catch up a bit, so please forgive the tardiness! More adventures to write up, as the flying and fun has not abated, and in fact, I’m starting on a new flying adventure and will update about that in a more timely fashion!)(And please forgive the lack of videos and some photos—Typepad is very tempermental seemingly!)
For Labor Day weekend, Michiko and I decided to do an impromptu day trip to Martha’s Vineyard. With gorgeous weather, we had a beautiful flight up to the Katama Airpark (1B2) in Edgarton, MA and its well maintained grass runways. After checking in at the “desk”, we taxied down to the southern grass parking area and buttoned up the plane. It was a simple walk with our stuff across the street to the beach and we spent a good chunk of the day just kicking back in a shade tent and relaxing. A couple of seals popped their heads up in the water just in front of us, and a couple times, the beach patrol came racing by and pulling people out of the water because of shark warnings to either side of us. Throughout the day, one of the biplanes stationed at Katama kept making the rounds, so that was entertaining as well!
Steelers game
For my birthday present, Michiko got us tickets to the Pittsburgh Steelers home game in mid-September. We’d never been to a football game, so we made a little adventure weekend out of it, flying out to Allegheny Couty Airport (KAGC in West Mifflin, PA, just south/southeast of Pittsburgh. The flight out was fantastic, not too much headwind (unlike our earlier trip out to Jimmy Stewart), albeit a bit hazy with summer-like heat. We were given a straight-in approach almost 15 miles out from the airport and the very efficient line crew at Corporate Air had us fueled and sorted quickly. We Ubered into town to our hotel and spent the rest of Friday and most of Saturday wandering parts of downtown, including the Senator John Heinz History Center where we enjoyed exhibits about the local glass industry, pickles, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and the Underground Railroad in western PA.
It turned out that the Steelers team spent the night before the game in our hotel—the wide variety of nice cars and pickup trucks in the secure parking area on the east side of the hotel should have given us a clue! Saturday morning, we had a wonderful breakfast at a place around the corner that Michiko had found, The Speckled Hen. (It was so good, we went back Sunday morning before the game!)
It was a pretty easy walk from our hotel out to Acrisure Stadium (along with seemingly half of the population of Pittsburgh), for the Steelers v. Patriots game. We ultimately lost the game, but Michiko and I had a lot of fun at our first NFL game, including wearing our new Steelers attire and waving our Terrible Towels!
After walking back to the hotel, we collected our bags and grabbed a quick Uber out to the airport, where the line crew had us ready to go. After pre-flighting and picking up our instrument flight plan home, we were soon into the hazy skies again, with a slight tailwind to help us along.
In mid-October, I got to combine two of my passions, raptors and flying, when a Pilots N Paws rescue mission came up to take an osprey from a wildlife rescue in northeastern CT down to a wildlife rehabilitator down in Wilmington, NC. I launched at dawn from Bridgeport and headed up to Danielson Airport (KLZD) in Killingly, CT to meet up with Pamela of Sweet Binks Rescue and pick up “Fishface the Osprey.” It was a beautiful morning flight, watching the sun start to color the horizon and the valleys filled with fog, including the Connecticut River. Luckily, Danielson is located towards the top of a hill and was fog-free—only a few miles southwest of the field was Windham Airport and it was covered with low ground fog—I couldn’t even spot it as I flew over!
Pamela and a few of her friends helped transfer the osprey in it’s cage into the airplane, covered with a quilt to try to keep it as quiet and comfortable and stress-free as possible during the journey. Then I fired up and headed back the way I had come and continued on, straight over the top of JFK Airport, with big jets departing and arriving underneath me. Soon I was joining the pattern at Old Bridge (3N6) and landing on Runway 24. I taxiied over to parking and sidled up next to Dan’s Bonanza. (One of Pamela’s friends got a nice video clip of me taking off from Danielson.)
We transferred the bird to Dan’s plane and then settled in for the next leg, down to Wilmington, NC to meet up with Amelia from Skywatch Bird Rescue. Our flight south took us over Patuxent Naval Air Station (nothing moving though) right about the same time a small twin overtook us about 100’ below and popped out in front of us. A little later on, we flew over the top of the Hampton Roads/Norfolk area and Langley Air Force Base, and we spotted an aircraft carrier docked.
Once on the ground at Wilmington, we met up with Amelia from Skywatch and made the handoff of the osprey. We then took an Uber into town to grab some lunch and walked around the neighborhood a little bit before enjoying a delicious lunch. Dan’s daughter enjoyed a “big-ass pretzel” as her lunch, which had us in stitches!
People and plane fueled, we headed up to Norfolk Airport (KORF) to pick up a Yorkie puppy rescue (originally there were supposed to have been two pups, but one apparently got adopted before our arrival). Dan’s daughter, on seeing the puppy, immediately took full control and snuggled the pup throughout the flight up to its drop-off at Delaware Coastal Airport/Sussex County Airport (KGED) in Georgetown, DE. Then it was a fairly quick hop back up New Jersey to Old Bridge where I picked up Gwaihir and made the last leg home in the dark with NYC laid out below me.
For Michiko’s birthday in November, we flew (commercial, sadly) out to Los Angeles for a few days (behind-the-scenes movie studio tours x 2; museums, tourist sites, afternoon tea, and relaxing on the balcony overlooking the marina at our hotel) before driving up to San Francisco for more tourist activities: Fisherman’s Wharf, a fun Warriors basketball game, dim sum in Chinatown,
There were a few interesting aviation related tidbits during the trip. At the Museum of Motion Pictures, we saw the Oscar statuette for the first film to ever win Best Picture—appropriately enough, an aviation flick from 1927 called Wings! On the drive up to SF, we passed Naval Air Station Point Mugu, so I turned around to check out the small public park at the edge of the base with examples of missles tested at the range there. As we walked around, two Hawker Hunter jets (British fighter plane) landed at Point Mugu. From what I could find later, they’re owned by a private military contractor and serve as agressor aircraft, including electronic warfare.
Up in San Franciso, we visited the Pacific Air Museum out at the Charles Schulz/Sonoma County Airport (KSTS) for a quick walk through their amazing collection. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a time crunch as I has booked a Cessna 172 and instructor so that I could do a little flying out in California (and check off the map for landing in that state). Michiko came along in the back seat and we did a nice wander south to the Golden Gate Bridge and back up the coast including Point Bonita, Stinson Beach, Point Reyes, Bodega Bay and then followed the Russian River back over the hills to the airport. I didn’t make a great landing, but salvaged it at the last second, so didn’t embarrass myself too badly. We then hit the Charles Schulz Museum itself, with all the appropriate Snoopy flying his Sopwith Camel doghouse, etc.
Closer to Thanksgiving, I got to meet up with Paul, the attorney I’d met out at the Lawyer Pilots Bar Association summer event who has a Cessna 182Q based out of Bridgeport. Paul had recently gotten his plane back from a very nice glass panel overhaul and he wanted a safety pilot with him to shoot some approaches while he practiced with the new glass, particularly with the missed approaches. I suggested heading out to Chester (KSNC) since they were usually pretty quiet there and typically you can practice the GPS35 and GPS17 with all the procedure turns and holds without much issue, regardless of which runway is active.
Sure enough, Chester was quiet on a Wednesday afternoon and Paul was able to work through three approaches with procedure turns, missed approaches and holds. Afterwards, I shot a couple approaches, a GPS35 with the procedure turn, flown manually and then a GPS17 with a procedure turn, flown as a coupled approach with the autopilot. Done with flying, we tucked the plane away in his hangar and grabbed a beer at a restaurant called The Landing at Five Twenty, while we debriefed. (Funny enough, when I flew with Milton a couple days later to shoot some more approaches, I heard Paul out flying and also practicing some approaches out at Chester!)
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